


Wishes on a Wheel

by waterfallliam



Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: Depression, Episode: s02e12 Epiphany, Introspection, M/M, Other Characters Are Mentioned
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-22
Updated: 2019-12-22
Packaged: 2021-02-24 15:40:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,237
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21900337
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/waterfallliam/pseuds/waterfallliam
Summary: The sun is gentle, faintly wrong against his skin. The wind whispers against his arms and neck that he’s alive and that counts for something, he’s never wholly alone, he still has himself—but it’s nothing like the sea breeze that feels like home.
Relationships: Rodney McKay/John Sheppard
Comments: 4
Kudos: 33





	Wishes on a Wheel

It’s both easy and hard, not moving as the sun slowly edges across the blankets, ticking away slices of the day as he lays there, stagnant, numb. It’s been a month, and he’s heard nothing from his team, nothing from anyone on the Atlantis expedition. Crawling under the sheets and staying there is familiar and easy, like walking a well-remembered path. It’s hard because he knows how futile it is, how it isn’t going to help anything—help him, because John is early is to rise in the morning, a runner, looking for something to fill his attention.

But his head is already an ugly mire of old fears and truths that grew with his bones; a gaping maw he’s giving himself over to, because the only way out is through it. He needs to learn to live with this fear, to hold it in his chest without letting it consume him before he can decide whether or not to keep it.

It’s been a month of crackers and fruit off a wooden plate, showering when he can no longer stand the smell of himself, laying down so much he’s sure he’s well on his way to giving himself a bad back. He hasn’t shaved and he hasn’t heard anything from the people he’d live or die for. He hasn’t seen the shining city, her heart beating in the gentle glow of stacks of gold, the rainbow stain of sunlight and straight, soothing lines. Colour, colour everywhere, his friends just around the corner and the sea to sing him to sleep. Here he rests uneasily in greyscale, if it can even be called rest.

Eventually, he gets up. You can get tired of anything.

He’ll tan easily, he knows himself well enough. The sun is gentle, faintly wrong against his skin. The wind whispers against his arms and neck that he’s alive and that counts for something, he’s never wholly alone, he still has himself—but it’s nothing like the sea breeze that feels like home. There’ll be an explanation, McKay going red in the face as he blusters a dramatic tale of hows and whys and John’s world will right itself again, or so he promises himself. Teyla will smile and maybe he’ll have the courage to—finally, for the first time—say something, tell her, tell Rodney, Elizabeth, even Carson and Zelenka, how they—that—

“You’re so sure that they will return. It’s been two months, John,” Teer says.

He can’t really ask her to stop calling him that. There’s no military here, no evidence of a distant authority to rage against except his doggedness to wear his BDUs and tuck all but one of the corners of his bed down every morning. “We don’t leave people behind.”

It comes down to needing to believe it rather than wanting to. He has no greater faith in humanity, like Carson or Elizabeth. He doesn’t have a diplomat’s belief in compromise like Teyla does, or her hope for everything that humanity can be while still not being disillusioned to harsh realities. She makes him want to do better. But all of it, Atlantis and her people, hasn’t sunk so deep inside him as to change the truths he falls back on, that he is alone, and that by ensuring no one else is he won’t have to face that. They don’t leave people behind.

McKay had come for him on the _Aurora_ , and eventually he had heard the whole story of how he’d tried to save Sheppard from the Wraith, hopped up on enzyme and tangoing with a heart attack. It hadn’t made sense, the food that had been sent through so much later. Had they been attacked? Is there a Sheppard double running around, fooling them into never realising that he’s stuck here?

It’s lonely, having no one to talk to who knows about Earth or wants to understand about his previous life. Maybe he’s not being fair, maybe Teer’s blank smile is her best effort, her reaching back as much as she can, and him deciding it’s not enough is his way of giving up. Hedda listens with an unencumbered wonder, but for all her gifts and kindness she is still just a child.

“What about these?” She pokes at his cowlicks.

He shakes his head gently, making it a hint for her to stop rather than a flinch. “What about them?”

“They do that all on their own?” She draws her hand back, rocking onto her heels and giving John the space he needs to finish peeling the not-potato-but-close-enough plant he’s holding.

“Yeah, they do. 100 percent natural.” No gel or wax, he thinks, and he knows there is an ongoing bet as to how long he takes in the morning to style it. Just water and luck, that’s the secret. Hedda giggles in response.

This is a new kind of exile. Home had not been a place except in the cockpit, had not meant people until Atlantis, and to have it so suddenly ripped away from him is a new kind of pain. He falls back on old strategies, counting in his mind and building dream after dream, withdrawing, unsure of how much longer this can last.

Some days he manages a pretty decent impression of sleep, awake at odd hours and tricking himself into dozing. On others he wakes with a jackhammer heart, feeling sand between his fingers, mottled blood on his palms; but the uniforms change, beige fatigues blur to blue to black to grey. It’s the cold press of skin he feels for an earth-shattering heartbeat, then the heat of his own blood reminds him that this is the present.

No one comes to stand with him. The hurt is both familiar and new, the old song of certainty clashing with the persistent hope that his team _will_ come for him. Stay put, stay strong, and wait for rescue. No one is cannon fodder. But where are they?

It’s been years. On some level, he’d realised it had changed, that his world, his life, is different now, but desperate times invoke a particular clarity. At least he used to be able to fly. Now all he has is watching the clouds as he lays in the field, or the slither of blue out his window.

“Come, John. There is not much else to do here, why not try to find some serenity,” Avrid urges.

Meditation means remembering and he’d rather be running, fighting—anything. It’s both too quiet and not quiet enough—the breeze is too gentle to lull him into focus, the ambient noises of people breathing, clothes rustling, of plain existing are like a pickaxe against his mind. He gets the hang of it eventually, shifting the mechanics of his brain to a distant and quiet place that is isn’t grounding, isn’t feeling, but he needs to pretend is peace. He knows better.

It had been both as natural as breathing and the hardest thing he’s ever done, letting people into his life, letting them matter again. Because how can he, and how can he not.

When he considers they might not come for him, his chest hollow and empty, he reminds himself that he knows better.

Much later he finds out from Teyla that McKay had kicked himself for not sending a note. For not thinking faster or smarter. For still not being good enough. Stuck in the cloister, the new dimensions McKay takes on in his mind are strange. He knows it’s all this time to think, to reflect. He realises how much he’s noticed his hands or the quirk of the mouth, how his stomach warms when he recalls his playful tone. He hadn’t seen it coming, realising he likes McKay, not ever—and definitely not while trapped, possibly for the rest of what may become a very long life.

What he does is set goals for himself, charting the days since his arrival, aiming to get his strength back and go in search of a way out. He knows it can’t last a lifetime, but it doesn’t need to. He wants to say his belief never falters, never wavers. But whole days pass in ticks of sunlight, exiled from the slice of sky out his window.

He doesn’t decide to stop believing or hoping, that is perhaps the important distinction. What he needs is to stop giving into fear, to calm the stutter-shake of his hands when he imagines wrinkles staring back at him in the pond, the backdrop unchanged. Sure, his job is to fight monsters, the scarier the better. He’s so good at it because he’s used to it, working out where his fear is coming from and running towards it. But habits are fallible, even when they’re instinctive, worn into a facet of his character.

“Don’t you ever get scared, knowing they’re about to kill you? How do you do that, not feel fear?” McKay had asked, knees knocking together in the back of the Jumper, Teyla and Ronon up front with Lorne, John benched from flying because of a nasty concussion.

He remembers following the slant of Rodney’s mouth, unsure as to why, but letting himself, trusting in his intuition.

“I… am scared, McKay.” McKay because he can’t say Rodney, because he wants to say Rodney but that’s not—he’s— “I try and do it anyway.”

Rodney’s mouth hangs open a fraction, as if John’s honesty is sudden and surprising, or maybe it’s his openness. “Just like that?”

Coming from Rodney the words sound so simple, but if he really was brave, he’d let himself slump against him. He settles for awkwardly patting his elbow, misses, and lands on Rodney’s hand instead. Oops. “Just like that.”

He’d been looking at him, but away from the reason why. If Rodney walked through the door of his hut right now, John isn’t sure what he’d do. Kiss him, or take his hand, this time on purpose, and watch his face make impossible shapes. Wrap him up in his arms as tight as he can manage, never let him go again.

Rodney might actually smack him if he did that, any of that. He’d be in for a verbal tirade, that’s for sure. Is there something Rodney would want that John can offer? Wedged in together in the narrow Lantean beds, science fiction classic in the background, his head resting on Rodney’s belly. Does he like to cuddle? A quick and dirty blowjob in the shower, the tiles murder on his knees, Rodney’s hand in his hair, not pulling, just holding him as tries to manoeuvre himself even closer.

It’s easy to get lost in all this… longing, lounging in the sun, sweat pooling in the dip of his back and against his chest as he helps in the field, daydreaming while setting the communal table, drifting further and further away as he sits with his legs crossed in empty contemplation. The sunlight against Rodney’s profile, the way his hands dip and curve like functions as he talks, the indelible rhythm of his words.

Four months in, he first asks about discarded wood. He keeps his knife sharp on the stone in the square, a ritual early in the morning on the same day every week. Hedda runs to show him the pile near the border where the cloister’s safety ends. Holding the warm, grainy wood in his hand, he tests the give of it gently, slicing a thin strip away, then another.

The first thing he makes is an eagle. He hasn’t made something with his hands in years, the model planes from his childhood lost to the tide of time. Here spring never ends, here a harvest will never know pestilence or blight. The ground is soft and damp, even though the sun always shines an arc across the sky.

It’s work that takes time which is perfect, there’s so much of it to fill with improving his technique and designing carvings for everyone closest to him. He leaves the eagle he carves for Ford to stand sentry by the woodpile, looking out to an indeterminable point past the barrier, watching over him since John can’t anymore.

“Can you make me one?” Hedda asks. He leaves her a rabbit a week later.

There are tan lines from his linen shirts, a couple of inches below the sleeves of his threadbare t-shirt. His boots won’t wear out soon, but every little piece of Atlantis he has to set aside feels like resignation. It drives him round and round in circles, a strange crop field pattern of worry and consternation in his mind as to where the hell his team are.

It sits in his chest like a pebble, rattling around in his ribcage when he runs, longer and longer stretches, so he can make it to the cave again. The fear that nothing has changed clings to him, a thin film over his face, making it hard to see, hard to breathe. He needs to run right at it, find the beast and kill it. Soon, soon he will be able to run far enough.

“Can you pass the flour?” Avrid presses the smooth bowl against his hand.

He’s learning to cook, measuring spices with his naked eye and stealing mouthfuls off a wooden spoon, white shirt speckled with orange and yellow. But there’s stew on weekdays and weekends, not that they have those here. He shows them how to grill the sloppy patties he made on an open fire American style, careful to kill the rabbit like creatures quickly, painlessly. It’s not really much different from what they usually have, but he’s proud. Maybe next time he’ll catch something bigger.

The quiet never ends, never oscillates or relaxes. Usually he longs for it, his thoughts straining for the moment he can shut it all out, come to rest and just glide, far, far away from it all. But you can get tired of anything.

The sky is untouchable, unreachable no matter how fast he runs, and he can’t run, not really, not away from much or towards anything. In a way, he thinks he should be grateful to Teer. For the wrong reason, of course: she shows him a new direction, a new vector of flight, even if he can’t follow it yet.

“I’ve waited for you.”

But he doesn’t love her. They’re friends, and he’s grateful for how they’ve welcomed him, tried to make him feel at home, but he doesn’t feel that way about her. He doesn’t want to love her like that, he doesn’t want to leave his body behind and drift off into the air. No matter how long his exile here lasts, he never will.

He’s glad he went through, him and not Rodney. Not any of them. For Ronon to be alone again, for Teyla to be so far from her people… from the team too, he hopes. But if—and only if—he was going to be trapped here with someone, selfishly he’d choose Rodney. He wishes it was Rodney in front of him when Teer broaches the notion of fate. He’s never believed in destiny, but serendipity, now there’s something he can get behind. If it was Rodney in front of him, he’d be blunt, and maybe his hands would finally close the gap between them, braver than John has ever been.

Except that Rodney can’t be there, and he can’t let himself wish that, because that would mean that Rodney isn’t searching for him.

He carves an owl for Elizabeth and imagines there’s something of her wisdom about the eyes. Ronon gets a shield, Teyla a dove, and for Rodney… he tries a ZPM, works on etching a crude rendition of the Julia set outline in miniature, but settles on a model _Enterprise,_ the original NCC-1701. He holds it in his hand, making it zoom about the room with the curtains closed, and wishes he could ride it all the way home.

When it happens, it’s easy to grab the pouch with his carvings and sling it over his shoulder and across his chest, lighter than any military equipment he’s ever had to carry. As he runs, he imagines breaking the sound barrier, his feet carrying him faster than light.

When he sees his team, he thinks he must be dreaming. But the sunlight is too sharp, his chest too tight, and they’re standing in front of him.

“What the hell took you so long?”

All it took was for the villagers to face their fear. He’s grateful to Avrid and Teer for their kindness, he’ll actually miss Hedda, and tries not to think about how messed up it is, becoming light and energy when you’re not even a teenager. If he thinks too long about any of this Ancient stuff, hell, even most of what goes on back on Earth, it gets him all twisted up inside.

Teyla is the first person he reaches for, touching his forehead against hers as soon as they’ve cleared the time dilation portal. He’d barely touched another person in the cloister, hadn’t wanted to, and after all those years another six months isn’t that long, except that now he does want to. In the jumper he’s sat on a bench in the back, shooed away from the pilot’s chair by Beckett’s worrying. McKay is sat beside him, everybody else crammed in the front.

Half a year sits heavily on him, and it feels wrong that McKay hasn’t even grown proper five o’clock shadow. John’s fingers tap out a nervous beat against the padding. The engine is soothingly familiar, yet he’s unaccustomed to the noise. The trip to the gate is short, John remembers as much, but Elizabeth had said something about getting readings for Zelenka’s team. What are a few hours more before he gets to see Atlantis again.

“Sheppard, I—” McKay cuts himself off, but there’s no follow up.

John looks at him looking away, the light from the from the front of the Jumper casting weird shadows across his face, blissfully different than the cloister’s unending sunshine or the candles in his cottage at night. His hand shakes, and he feels frozen, caught between wanting to move and actually moving. He’s scared. He’s scared of being rejected, of fucking it up, of learning how to not to be alone because it will only hurt all the more when it’s over. He’s scared, but you can get tired of anything.

“Rodney,” John says, voice half a whisper. Rodney’s hand feels good under his, real and warm and alive. “I missed you.”

“I—” Rodney twists his wrist to slip his fingers between John’s, inching closer. “Really?”

With his other hand, he retrieves the model spaceship from the pouch laying next to him on the bench. He flies it over to Rodney, holding it carefully, like he would a test tube or tissue paper.

“That’s for me?” Rodney takes it. “Did you make this?”

John nods, and lifts Rodney’s hand to mouth, presses a kiss across his knuckles.

“Oh, you—” Rodney exhales softly, smiling nervously.

John shifts, pressing their thighs together, getting close enough to feel the puffs of Rodney’s breath against his face. “Really missed you.”

Then John kisses him, just like that. It’s sweet and lingering, better than what he’s been dreaming because Rodney is right here, kissing him back, solid as the sky.

**Author's Note:**

> I didn't think this would go anywhere when I started writing it tbh. I wrote most of it in snippets on my phone while my laptop was getting repaired (no SGA for me for a while, but all fixed now :) and I rather like how it ended up. The title is from the Beach House song [Wishes](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qfehwieOgVk). Many thanks to [ThirdRateDuelist](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ThirdRateDuelist/pseuds/ThirdRateDuelist) for beta reading and listening to me talk about the show. Hope you enjoyed reading!


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